Great Washington Park Group Ride

A bunch of us old geezers and a few Dutch younguns did another group ride at Washington Park last Saturday. It was breezy and cool, for Bonaire that is. The temps were probably in the low 80s. The park was busy with bird counters (the annual Lora census) and goat wranglers. We saw a rainbow at the start but didn't actually get rained on ourselves. The dirt roads were hard packed but bumpy.

Here is our happy group near the start of the ride. You can click on the pix to see them bigger.


February is the perfect Bonaire month for outdoor activities. It is starting to dry out a little, the wind is picking up a little, but it's not too hot yet and the Sahara dust hasn't started blowing our way from Africa, so the skies are nice and clear.

Here we see, from left to right, TWR missionary Jon Savage, and Laura and George De Salvo, of the "Bonaire Reporter." Bonaire lovers can get an online subscription to the Bonaire Reporter. We have one, 'cause we don't always get to pick up one of the print versions.


There is an amazing large shady patio at Slag Bai now. You've got the gorgeous water on one side, flamingoes on the other side, and a nice cool breeze this time of the year, even at 11 am.

One could just hang out here for hours.

I didn't 'cause I still had a long ride home. It takes about 45 minutes to get back to the park gate from here, and another 40 to 45 to ride back home from the park to Hato.

Trip to Curacao

We flew to Curacao on Valentines day to visit a doctor. We'll be back for some tests in the near future. Had a great Valentines day lunch at Pizza Hut and visited a warehouse type store. Big stuff after one has been on Bonaire for a couple years.

We flew on a Divi Divi puddle jumper plane. There is a great picture of it on their web page. They do a great job with charter and commuter flights. They fly low and slow, so taking a cue from my father in law' s success last summer, I brought a camera along and took lots of photos. Next time I'll bring the camera as well as a cloth to clean the plane's window!

Here is a view of our neighborhood. The squiggly black arrow points to our house.


Notice the clear aqua water and the way the bottom drops off to the deep blue depths quite close to the shore.

You can also see the water and electric plant that had the fire recently just below the middle of the arrow. The big generators are still out of commission, so it is nice and quiet at our house, but we still have the occasional rolling blackout.

The majority of the houses in this picture weren't there when I first came to Bonaire in 1975. In fact, the Dutch marines were having war games in the area just above the arrow my first night on the island. Woke me up about 2am, scared to death and wondering just what sort of third world disaster I had gotten myself into. Then I looked out the window and saw the Lowell kids out in the street watching the action and decided that, appearances to the contrary, it must be safe. I found out the next day what was going on.

The marines and their gear proved to be great "kid magnets." It was amusing to see the soldiers try to cope with finding their carefully camouflaged machine gun nest - ambush site swarming with curious kids.

College Rankings

Yahooie, the Princeton Review college rankings for this year are out. Now that our son, Richard, will be graduating from Bucknell in three months, it is fun to think back to those good old college selection days.
Wheaton College turns up on a number of the lists, including the number one rank for best food.
There is a box towards the bottom of the page where you can enter your favorite college and see if it turned up on any on the lists.

Rolling Blackouts

Well, Sandra and I are going to Curacao on Monday to see a Neurologist, but that is not the kind of blackouts I'm referring to.

After the big fire last weekend, there isn't quite enough generating capacity on the island to meet the demand, so we are having four hour long power outages in the different neighborhoods of Bonaire on a rotating basis. Our power in Hato was off from 8 pm to midnight on Tuesday, from 4 pm to 8 pm on Wednesday, from noon to 4pm on Thursday, and from 8 am to noon today.

The TWR studios and offices are on a different schedule, but it is predictable, which helps a lot. Long time readers of my blog will remember my posts about our new standby generator at the studios. (see the January 2004 link in the archives list on the right margin of this page)
I'm happy to report that it is working well, and it is saving the day right now.

WEB, the power company has done a good job of making sure our big AM transmitter has power when we need it for our international broadcasts. We are very thankful for that. Our local FM transmitter, on the other hand, is off for four hours each day, on the same schedule as our home in Hato.

Some of you who have lived on Bonaire may remember Sigfried Quarton, an Engineer with the power company. He went in to work when the fire started at 4:30 am and didn't get back home until 3:30 am the next day. Then, after a short sleep, he was out again. His wife says she has hardly seen him this week. So the WEB guys are working hard on fixing things.

A big standby generator or two arrived from Curacao on Wed. night and they hope to have them online by the end of the weekend. (the CAT genset I saw filled a whole 40 foot container - so it's a wee bit bigger than the one we installed last year)

Picture of fire damage at WEB

You can see the fire damage on the walls of the WEB diesel building.
Click on the picture to make it bigger.


We just got our power back on about 15 minutes ago. (7:35 pm) so we are very happy for that. The last I heard, no one knew much about how the fire started. We do think that supplying the island's full power needs is going to be iffy with just the plant out by TWR in operation. But if we have power all night, and our fridge and freezer get cold again, we'll be content, even if they have to do the rolling blackout thing from time to time.

Big Fire on Bonaire

There was a BIG fire a the WEB power generating plant right next to our house early this morning. You could see the flames from "all over the island." Bob Thorp saw them quite easily from the TWR studios at any rate.

I woke up when our power went off around 4:45 am because the UPS that we have our computer plugged into started beeping. The crazy thing is that I didn't notice the fire, because there are two big water storage tanks between our house and the power plant, and apparently they blocked everything. I did hear the heavy equipment roaring around over there etc. They brought over some of the monster sized foam equipped fire trucks from the airport to put out the fire.

So, we have no power at home and there is no power in Belnem and at the transmitter site. So we are thankful that they place didn't blow up and level our house, but are praying that they will be able to get the power restored, especially to our transmitters, soon.

Brandaris Climb 2005

Jon and Debbi Savage and I climbed Brandaris in Washington Park yesterday. I took a GPS with me and measured about 1.2 miles of hiking and about 700 feet of vertical from the base to the top. The summit is about 780 feet above sea level.

It was fairly cloudy and there was a light breeze, which made for wonderful climbing conditions. The heat in Washington Park can be brutal some times of the year.

Here is the beginning of the path to the top. You can tell we've had a lot of rain this year. The trail has become quite eroded and the vegetation is almost lush.

You can click the picture to see it bigger.


Looking towards Playa Funchi from the top.


I've posted four more pictures from yesterday's trip to the park in my club photo site. The first six pix in the album are from 2005. The rest date back as far as 2002.

You can click the club photo thumbnails to enlarge the pictures, and then click again on the pictures to see them at full 1024x768 resolution.

WEB Based Internet Chat

Because of security issues, TWR has decided to remove all Instant Messaging apps from the computers and workstations within TWR offices etc.

If we want to IM we'll need to use web versions of the IM services. They run as java apps on the local machines and should be safer. These web apps seem to work well, once you tell XP to not block popups on these particular web sites.

These web based IM sites are also useful if you are temporarily using a different computer that doesn't have your favorite IM client installed on it. Pretty cool.

Here are links to the web versions of the three main chat systems.

Yahoo!: http://messenger.yahoo.com/ - link at bottom of page for Launch Web Messenger

AIM/AOL: http://aimexpress.aim.com

MSN: http://webmessenger.msn.com

More Flamingos

Here is another picture from up on the lighthouse, looking north west. In haze in the distance you can see the hills at the other end of the island. Also on the horizon are the salt piles from the salt company, and in the middle is a big pink blob consisting of zillions of flamingos. You should probable click on this picture to make it bigger to see the flamingos.

The View from the Top

From time to time, for one reason or another, the door of the Willemstoren lighthouse, at the south end of Bonaire is open. Right now is one of those times. The stairs inside are in great shape, much better than those of the Spelonk Lighthouse. (which is almost always open)

The sky was pretty clear, but not clear enough to see Curacao or Venezuela. (I'm assuming that would be possible if it was clear enough - they saw both from our radio towers recently)

Here is the view looking to the East. You can tell from the sea that the trade winds are finally coming back. You can click on the picture to make it bigger.


I usually ride by here on my Saturday morning bike rides. There is an all too brief downwind leg just to the west of the lighthouse.

Here we are looking a little south of west. As you can see, this end of the island is really flat and not much above sea leval. A number of ships and boats have crashed into Bonaire over the years that I've been here.


The view pretty much due west, looking towards red slave. The friendly flamingos featured in a recent post were right where the green water to the right seems to meet the road and the sea at the horizon.

Friendly Flamingoes

I've been fighting a cold all week and have either been home in bed, or slouched in front of my audio workstation at the office. Haven't been up to blogging. But I'm feeling pretty good today, not good enough for a bike ride, but up to posting a couple friendly flamingos.
You can click on the pix to make them bigger.

Freddy is nosing around in the muck looking for yummy critters to eat.


Freddy and Flossie Flamingo feeling brave. Usually one only gets pictures of the hindquarters of flamingos, because they tend to start walking away as soon as they spot you.

Tower Painting is Underway

We've got five guys on the tower each day. Rich hopes that the first tower will be finished by the end of February. Right now we are expeniencing great tower painting weather.

Thru the Bible Program talks about TWR

I just finished auditioning the TTB program for Friday, January 21. Thru The Bible is a Bible study / survey that covers the entire Bible over a five year period. They are just starting to look at Hosea, an easy to read book with a powerful message, found in the Old Testament.

At the start of the Friday program, the annoucer spends some time talking about TTB's partnership with Trans World Radio in broadcasting to the Indian sub-continent. I thought it was a pretty good overview, so be sure to catch it if you can.
Here is a link to a list of the stations and times that TTB is on the air.
You can also listen to the program online at at the TTB web site.

One of the key components in the ministry to India is the TWR station on Sri Lanka. As you know, Sri Lanka recently got hammered by the tsunami. Friends and contacts there say it will take many months and even years to get things back to "normal."

We are very thankful to the Lord that the TWR studio and transmitter facilities weren't damaged by the tsunami and that none of the TWR staff was killed. This is not to say that they weren't affected. For example, one of the guys working at the transmitter site lost 20 family members. So do remember to pray for them in their time of personal loss and as they help with relief efforts.

TWR is also working towards coordinating long term relief care for people in this region. You can learn more about that on the TWR web site.

New Kids Missions Materials

TWR has produced a great new Kids Missions Curriculum. It's designed to fit a variety of Christian education contexts, including Sunday school, church missions emphases, Bible clubs, VBS and home school. TWR plans to release new curriculum supplements annually, focusing on children in a different country or region each year.

Bonaire Medical School Graduation

Back on Dec. 17, one of the medical schools here on Bonaire held a graduation service at the Activities Building. The class president and the Lt. Governor presented a great Christian witness / challenge to the students and the many guests.

Lt. Governor Domacasse addressed the class and also gave the benediction.


Here's a group shot of the graduating class. Click on the pix to see them bigger.


We enjoyed lots of good food after the ceremony. The activities building was packed.

Long Time no Blog

Whew, I haven't posted anything for a week. We've been enjoying having our son, Richard here.

I'm still keeping up with my bike rides, having logged about 190 miles so far this year. I don't normally keep track of my mileage, but this year I'm trying something new and logging my rides at www.bikejournal.com.

It still rains every day and sometimes it rains quite hard. Some days are overcast all day, which is quite rare for Bonaire. It is also quite cool at night, for Bonaire anyway.

We still go out in the evening and look for the comet Machholtz. It is pretty easy to see with the naked eye if you know about where to look. We don't see much of a tail, even in binoculars.

Happy New Year

Bonaire again greeted the new year with the sounds of exploding fireworks ringing in our ears. This is something that has to be experienced to be believed.

We're enjoying having our son, Richard, here for two weeks. He's jelling out and enjoying the fact that he has a good job lined up after he graduates from Bucknell in May.

We've been observing comet Machholz most every evening, clouds permitting. It is pretty bright as comets go, that is one can see it with the naked eye if one knows about where to look. It has just passed a little to the west of Orion and Taurus, and will be near the Pleiades on the 7th. That night it will be pretty easy to find, if you know anything about the stars at all. Sky and Telescope has a easy to use chart. On Saturday and Sunday night, the horns of the bull (Taurus) were pointing right at the comet.

We've been watching satellites like the International Space Station and Iridium flares do their thing in the early evening sky as well.

Queen Mary 2 is back today

I got close up pix of the QM2 last time it was in port. So today, Sandra and I went "mondi stomping" to get some panoramic shots of the ship and the Bonaire countryside.

As usual, you can click on the pictures to see them bigger.
Here is the view from the top of Seru Grandi, east of Antriol.


Here's one for the goat lovers.


Here's another one from part way up Seru Grandi.


QM2 as seen from just north of the Lagoen Road, opposite the Lagoen Villas residential area.


Same spot but from a lower angle.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from Bonaire. We had a short sweet Christmas Eve. Service last night and then came home and watched "Miracle on 34th Street" on the TV. I watched most of another Christmas classic, the one with the Red Ryder BB Gun, this morning before Sandra woke up.

Then it was potato pancakes with mashed potatoes left over from Thanksgiving. (yes they were in the freezer) and opening presents. Our son, Richard, will be transporting some presents for us when he comes on the 29th, but we managed to have some fun stuff for each other today.

I'm listening to a Reliant K cd that Sandra gave me as I write this. Very "snappy", to quote someone from another movie I like that Sandra doesn't...

It is a balmy 80 degrees with lots of sun and a slight breeze, perfect Christmas on Bonaire weather.

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Queen Mary II on Bonaire

The Queen Mary 2 visited Bonaire for the first time back on Dec. 12. It will be back on Dec. 27. I'm hoping to get a cool picture from up on Sero Largu, 'cause I saw one taken by someone else and said to myself, "why didn't I think of that?"

Here's a shot of the waterfront, sort of in the area where Sandra used to live when she was a kid. You can click on these pictures to see them bigger, 800x600 in this case.


It looks peacefull, but downtown was a hive of activity with zillions of passengers wandering around and locals coming to ogle the ships. We fit right in.


Sandra checks out the view from just north of the Flamingo Beach hotel. These are familiar sailing, snorkeling, and diving grounds for us, so it is cool to see such big ships parked here.

We're back online.

We got our Flamingo TV internet connection back at our house yesterday afternoon, after being down for almost two weeks. We'll celebrate by posting a bunch of pictures.

Here is another shot of the hotel site across the street from TWR. We are enjoying the view.


Looking east across the stink pond towards Antriol. If you click on the picture to make it bigger, you might be able to spot the flamingos.

Activities Building

Here's what the TWR Activities Building is looking like these days. Our church meets there on Sundays. AWANA meets there, as do our monthly socials for the medical school students.

Since there are only a few us still here with TWR, the facilities have been made available to some others too. The Bonaire Youth Outreach Foundation meets here on Saturday evenings. A couple other local churches also use the outside area for game nights.

That's Playa Trading, a big hardware and building materials supplier, in the background. Kaya Amsterdam, the road in the picture, pretty much has continuous buildings the length of the street. When I first came to Bonaire, TWR and Cambes were just about the only things there. In fact, the first time I crossed the street from the offices to the Act. Building, I thought that Kaya Amsterdam was a driveway!

Satellite Dish Project

Here is Ivan Statia with one of the handy dandy antenna kits.


Getting ready to raise one of the pedestals.


Many hands make light work.


Bruce came from the antenna contractor in California to install the hardware. Paul, an engineer from Intelsat was here again too.

New Short Wave Transmitter in Brazil

The three hours of Portuguese language programming that we air from Bonaire each day comes from a 24 hour a day satellite feed produced by our TWR partner in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Many local stations in Brazil also pick up and rebroadcast these programs.

Although we no longer broadcast on the short wave radio bands from Bonaire. Our TWR partner in Brazil has been broadcasting on two 10,000 watt transmitters. On Nov. 21, they commissioned a new 50,000 watt transmitter so they can reach more of that large country. You can read more about it here.

One cool side story is that the site manager and engineer for the RTM (Radio Tráns Mundial) short wave installation found the Lord as a result of listening to programs broadcast from Bonaire! You can read this inspiring story here.

If you'd like to brush up on your Portuguese, visit the TWR - Brazil web site.

Geminid Meteors

Whoo whoo, we went out last night at 10:30 pm to have a look at the comet, and saw lots of bright meteors.

We went to the Andrea 2 dive site to get away from the lights around our house. The comet was pretty easy to spot with the naked eye, but didn't seem to have a tail, even in binoculars.

The meteors were fantastic; pretty frequent, with many slow bright ones. If all meteor showers were this good, I'd surely go out and view them more often. This shower peaked last night, so we were out at the optimum time.

Monday Musings

Our internet access at home has been down since Thursday afternoon. It's amazing how much we've come to depend on it, having had it for less than a year at this point. I've got some pictures to post, but that will have to wait 'till we get connected again - I haven't put the software that lets me upload pix on my computer at work.

We've seen the comet a couple more times. The skies are really clear and dark, in between the clouds, 'cause the rain has washed all the dust out of the air. The comet it just about exactly where the finder chart (the second more detailed one) says it should be.

A bunch of us did a group ride in Washington Park on Saturday morning. It is nice and cool for bike riding, compared to the summer months anyway. The dirt roads in the park are a real mess because of the crazy rainy season we've had. I think my 1.5 hour personal best for riding through the park is safe for a while. Riding fast would be very difficult right now. Survival is the order of the day - which on a mtn. bike, is a lot of fun in it's own right.

I had a blast. I was the only one who rode out from Slac Bai, and got out just ahead of the mind bogglingly torrential rains that hit. The others in a F-150 pickup weren't sure if they were going to make it. The rushing waters were such that they couldn't identify where the road was in places.
I only got lightly rained on, which served to keep me from overheating in the roller coaster hills on the way out. The town of Rincon got hammered too. When I rode through Rincon, there were still fast moving rivers crossing some of the roads - like 3 to 6 inches deep rushing muddy water.

Because of the rain, the dirt road shortcut from Rincon to home would have been really a mess, so I rode back on the paved East road. It was quite a bit farther to ride, but at least I knew I would eventually get home in one piece. I've had the wheels and frame get so clogged up with mud on that other road that it stopped me cold. No pix of this bike ride, you had to be there....

We had not one, but two cruise ships in port on Sunday. One of them was the Queen Mary 2. That thing is HUGE. It seemed like everyone on Bonaire was there to see it. Of course that was only about four times the number of people who arrived on the ship. I'll post some pix when I can.

I've got some pix of our two new bird baths, I mean satellite dishes, too.

Comet Machholz spotted

2004 has sure been a banner year for bright comets. Last night, after coming back home from a food and fun night that our church held for students at the two medical schools here on Bonaire; Sandra and I observed what may be our fifth comet of the year.

Of course "bright" is a relative term. We could barely detect comet Machholz with our naked eye, after finding out exactly where to look using binoculars. But any comet that we can see with our naked eye is pretty cool.

The comet will be well placed during the whole holiday season, but this week is especially good for comet hunting because there is no pesky moon in the evening sky. (I saw the skinny crescent moon a little above Venus at 6 this morning.)

There is basic info about the comet and a finder chart on sky and telescope's web site. There is a very good, more detailed finder chart here. The good news is that the comet is only a little south west of Orion, a very prominent constellation. If you can find Orion, you should be able to use the detailed chart along with your binoculars, to "star hop" your way to the comet. Wow, all those connect the dots books that I did as a kid were preparing me to be an astronomer!

Let me know if you see it.

Going... Going... Gone

This is the machine that has been dismantling the old hotel, across the street from the TWR studios. That claw thing on the end can go up and down and left and right, but most importantly, can also spin. When it grabs a piece of wall and spins/twists the wall pops right off!

You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.


Here's a view of the demolition progress as seen from our old office wing, which is now a school. The machine just crawls along munching on the structure like a giant locust. Lots of people have been stopping by to witness a Bonaire institution disappear.


If I were still located in my old office, which had a window, I'd have a first class view now. Our offices are now in the double walled, soundproofed, windowless studio building.

Once I'm installed in front of my computer workstation, I don't know if its sunny or stormy, day or night.

But believe it or not, one day recently, it rained so hard that I actually did hear it from my office, in what used to be the music library when I first came to Bonaire in the mid 70s.


Here is the view from the studio side, with the new airconditioning condenser in the foreground and our green "Frog" in the parking lot.


This site would make a great park. The view, looking across to Klein Bonaire is most excellent. The beach itself got hammered by hurricane Lenny, a few years ago, but could be easily cleaned up.

More than 190 Languages

Continuing to expand the scope of its international outreach, Trans World Radio has surpassed 190 languages and dialects aired across the globe. In the last decade alone, TWR has added more than 90 languages and dialects to its broadcast schedule. You can find a list of all the languages here.

Recent additions to the airwaves include the following for the Northern Caucasus region of Russia: Avar, Kumyk, Dargwa, Lak, Lezgi, Tabasaran and Chechen.

Also new are Papiamentu (Bonaire); Pulaar (West Africa); and Uyghur (China).

“Expanding the number of languages TWR airs undoubtedly broadens our opportunity to reach even more people with the good news of Jesus Christ,” says TWR President Dr. David Tucker. “What’s more, by adding broadcasts into hard-to-reach areas like the Northern Caucasus region and China, we can deliver the gospel to people who might not otherwise have access to it.”